When a person is experiencing too much grief, sometimes there is not much we can say. If they are a Buddhist, then we have a chance to say things based more on reality and wisdom, and if they have enough of their own practice, they will be able to handle it. If they are not a Buddhist, there may be virtually nothing at all that we can say, it depends on how spiritual they are.
There is a little saying some of you know, "If a person does not consider the possibility of a next life, then they are not a spiritual person." We think similar to the saying, that because we consider there is a possibility of a next life, we want to purify, we want to do more now, to purify our mind and our heart. This body is going to die, this body is going to finish.
Now when a Christian or Jewish person is very spiritual, they are not so worried about Death, because they consider there is something that comes after death. When a Buddhist actually practices the teachings, they are not so worried about death because they consider that something is coming after death. So grief itself lessens when we consider life is a bigger thing than just one body staying alive. This is very interesting.
Now, with a Thai person, it's possible this woman has heard the teachings many times. But she obviously didn't think about them more deeply, she didn't understand the Law of Kamma is one of the biggest teachings in Buddhism. That we are each born according to our Kamma, and that if we die early, it is because of our Kamma, this is the teaching within the practice. So seemingly she was not willing to accept that her husband's Kamma was that he was supposed to die at that time. That's up to him, it's his life. If she wasn't able to let go after two years, she had a lot of grief, so it appears that she had too much attachment to understand this.
Yet to try to be true and correct, appropriate and beneficial and pleasant to the ear when someone is in grief, it's usually not possible to have all of that. I might add that as we develop and really reflect on death, then we are more open, we become open to the truth, the correctness that death will come, we are quite okay with it being whatever it is, seemingly appropriate, beneficial, whatever. And we don't find the words that somebody says to us about death as being unpleasant, we are actually okay with it. Because it reassures our own wisdom growth. So, not in a way that we are concerned, when we know death can come at any moment, then death can come and we are not upset with it. If our mother, brother, father, sister dies tonight, we find out about it in a couple days, then we know, okay it could happen. And if we are not upset with that, if we can see that sort of reaction in ourselves, then we are going to know the practice is going deeper.